Holy Saturday

Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. 54 It was the day of Preparation, and the sabbath was beginning.The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments.

On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

Luke 15:50-556(NRSV)

Death surrounded them, encircled them, and knocked them off their feet. The events of the preceding days had happened so quickly they had no time to fully prepare for the life-changing, hope-betraying crucifixion they had just witnessed. The future that had been so bright, filled with miracles and baptisms and new followers suddenly turned dark, just as the skies that stood over the three crosses just the day before.

Jesus was dead. The dreams to challenge the empire were now dead as well. What would become of these men and women who had given up everything they knew—careers, family, security, status—to follow this crazy dreamer? If they had known it was going to end this way, would they have made the same choices? What was left for them to choose now—now that their world had ended?

Filled with shock, then sadness and fear, they chose to hide, cloistered together. They had been told to wait, but for what? They had waited all of their lives for this Redeemer. Could they wait any longer? What other choices did they have but to wait? They did what was most familiar and perhaps comforting to them in this time of chaos and confusion. They stopped trying to make life work; they observed Sabbath and rested.

For today’s readers, this day offers us Sabbath as well. Holy Saturday extends to us the same invitation to rest in an uncomfortable place where we do not know exactly what we are waiting for, but where we can’t return to what we once had. We live suspended between the familiar and the unseen, between what we know and what we must trust. No wonder we numbly move from the crucifixion to the resurrection, barely noticing the 24 hours in between. It’s too painful to live in this space between death and new life. It’s easier to be in the certainty of one or the other.

Like the early disciples, we live in chaos, confusion, deep sadness, and even fear. The future we had prepared for is no longer visible, and perhaps not even possible, since crucifixion erased those dreams and resurrection hasn’t yet been made real.

Sister Joan Chittister writes, “The spirituality of religious life today is neither the spirituality of the cross nor the spirituality of the resurrection. The spirituality of our time is the spirituality of Holy Saturday: a spirituality of confusion and consternation, of ineffectiveness and powerlessness, of faith in darkness and the power of hope. It is a spirituality that carries on when carrying on seems most futile.”—The Fire in These Ashes, p 41

This day of preparation, Holy Saturday, is a day to carry on into what seems futile and to live in the mystery of endings when we long for new beginnings. This is a day to surrender into an agenda that is not our own, in a world where our vision of what makes sense gives way to a future that is not tied to our desires or plans. Without the dying, there will be no new life or transformation for us or for the world. On this day, let us rest, release control, and simply make space for that which will be soon unwrapped before us.